The Tactics Of Mistake

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Ahead of them were certainly more Dorsai troops than they had been led to expect. Enough, at least, so that the Dorsais had not hesitated to mount an attack upon them. To go forward might cause them to be caught in a trap. Besides, to go forward was to go into steadily deepening water. Even the officers were uncertain—and caution suggested itself as the better part of valor. The word was given to withdraw.

  In orderly manner, the two halves of the Neuland invading force split up and began to pull back along the river flats down which they had come. But, as they backed up, in each case, the width of the flat narrowed and soon the men farthest away from the bluff found themselves stumbling off into deeper water and the current pulling them away.

  As more and more Neuland troopers were swept out into the main river current, struggling and splashing and calling for help, a new panic began to rise in the ranks of those still standing in shallow water. They began to crowd and jostle to get close to the bluff. Soon their organization began to dissolve. Within minutes, soldiers were breaking away from the ranks and beginning to climb directly up the bluffs toward the safety of high ground overhead.

  But it was at this moment that Marc, following Cletus' earlier written orders, gave the command to his Dorsais lined up along the top of the bluff to fire down into these refugees from the rising waters … And it was all over but the shouting.

  They did not even have to call on the Neulanders to surrender. The panic-stricken colonists in uniform from over the mountains beyond Etter's Pass threw away weapons and began climbing the slope with their hands in the air, at first only a few, then mobs. By the time the sun was touching the western horizon, more than six thousand soldiers—as it was later to turn out, better than 70 per cent of Neuland's army—sat huddled together as prisoners under the guns of their Dorsai guards.

  But Cletus, still unconscious, knew none of this. Back in a room of the Dorsai HQ in Two Rivers, a prosthetic physician flown up from Bakhalla was straightening up from his examination of Cletus' swollen left knee, his face grave.

  "How is it, Doctor?" asked Eachan Khan, sharply. "It's going to mend all right, isn't it?"

  The physician shook his head and looked at Eachan soberly. "No, it isn't," the physician said. "He's going to lose the leg from just above the knee."

  16

  "Prosthetic knee and ankle joints—in fact, prosthetic lower limbs," said the physician, patiently, "are really excellent. Inside of a couple of months after you've adapted to the prosthetic unit, you'll find yourself almost as mobile as you were before with that limp. Of course, no one likes to face the thought of an amputation, but—"

  "It's not the thought of an amputation that worries me," interrupted Cletus. "I've got things to do that require two flesh and blood legs. I want a surgical replacement."

  "I know," answered the doctor. "But you remember we ran tests on you and you've got an absolute level of rejection. All the evidence is that it's a case of psychological, not physiological, rejection. If that's the case, all the immune-supressant drugs on the list can't help you. We can graft the leg on but your body's sure to reject it."

  "You're sure it's a case of psychological rejection?" said Cletus.

  "Your medical history shows you have a uniformally successful resistance to hypnosis, even under ordinary drugs," the doctor answered. "We find that kind of resistance almost always in people who exhibit psychological rejection of grafted organs, and whenever it's found we always—without exception—have psychological rejection. But just to put it to the test, I've brought along one of the new synthetic parahypnotic drugs. It leaves you conscious up to safe levels of dosage, but it absolutely anesthetizes volition. If you can resist hypnosis with that in you, then the resistance is below the levels even psychiatry can reach. It's probably a genetic matter. Do you want to try it?"

  "Go ahead," said Cletus.

  The doctor fastened the band of a hypnospray around Cletus' forearm, with the metered barrel of the drug poised above a large artery. The level of the liquid in the barrel of the spray was visible. Resting his thumb and little finger on Cletus' arm on either side of the band, the doctor placed the top of his forefinger on the spray button.

  "I'll keep asking you your name," he said. "Try not to tell me what it is. As you continue to refuse, I'll keep stepping up the dosage level. Ready?"

  "Ready," said Cletus.

  "What's your name?" asked the doctor. Cletus felt the cool breath of the hypnospray against the skin of his forearm.

  Cletus shook his head.

  "Tell me your name?" repeated the doctor.

  Cletus shook his head. The cool feeling of the spray continued. Slightly to his surprise, Cletus felt no light-headedness or any other indication that the drug was working on him.

  "Tell me your name."

  "No."

  "Tell me your name … "

  The questioning continued and Clerus continued to refuse. Abruptly, without warning, the room seemed filled with a white mist. His head whirled, and that was the last he remembered.

  He drifted back into a weariness, to find the doctor standing over his bed. The hypnospray was unstrapped from his arm.

  "No," said the doctor, and sighed. "You resisted right up to the point of unconsciousness. There's simply no point in trying a transplant."

  Cletus gazed at him almost coldly. "In that case," he said, "will you tell Mondar the Exotic Outbond that I'd like to talk to him?"

  The doctor opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it again, nodded and left.

  A nurse came to the door. "General Traynor is here to see you, Colonel," she said. "Do you feel up to seeing him?"

  "Certainly," said Cletus. He pressed the button on the side of the bed that raised the head section, lifting him up into a sitting position. Bat came in the door and stood beside the bed looking down at him; his face was like a stone mask.

  "Sit down, sir," Cletus said.

  "I'm not going to be here that long," said Bat.

  He turned about to close the door of the room. Then he turned back to glare down at Cletus.

  "I've just got two things to tell you," he said. "When I finally smashed the door open on the arms locker in your office and got a gun to shoot the hinges off the door, it was Sunday afternoon, so I made sure I got secretly out of town and phoned Colonel Dupleine quietly, before I made any fuss. You'll be glad to hear, then, there isn't going to be any fuss. Officially, I had a slight accident Friday afternoon a little ways outside of Bakhalla. My car went off the road. I was knocked unconscious and pinned in it. I wasn't able to get out until Sunday. Also, officially, what you did up at Two Rivers in capturing those Neulanders was done at my orders."

  "Thank you, sir," said Cletus.

  "Don't butter me up!" snarled Bat, softly. "You knew I was too bright to go around raising hell about your putting me out of the way until I'd found out what the score was. You knew I was going to do what I did. So let's not play games. You locked me up and nobody's ever going to know about it. But you captured two-thirds of the Neuland armed forces and I'm the one who's going to get most of the credit back in Geneva. That's the way things stand, and that's one of the two things I came to tell you." Cletus nodded.

  "The other thing's this," Bat said. "What you pulled off up there at Two Rivers was one hell of a piece of fine generalship. I can admire it. But I don't have to admire you. I don't like the way you work, Grahame, and I don't need you—and the Alliance doesn't need you. The second thing I came to tell you is this—I want your resignation. I want it on my desk inside of forty-eight hours. You can go back home and write books as a civilian."

  Cletus looked at him quietly. "I've already submitted my resignation from the Alliance Military Service," he said. "I'm also giving up my citizenship as an Earth citizen. I've already made application for citizenship on the Dorsai, and it's been accepted."

  Bat's eyebrows rose. For once his hard, competent face looked almost foolish. "You're skipping out on the Alliance?" he asked.

>   "Completely?"

  "I'm emigrating, that's all," said Cletus. He smiled a little at Bat. "Don't worry, General. I've no more interest in making public the fact that you were locked in my office over part of the weekend than you have. We'll assume a Neulander spy got into the office, found himself trapped and managed to break his way out."

  Their eyes met. After a second, Bat shook his head. "Anyway," he said. "We won't be seeing each other again."

  He turned and left. Cletus lay gazing at the ceiling until he fell asleep.

  Mondar did not show up until the following afternoon; he apologized for not coming sooner.

  "The message saying that you wanted to see me was sent through the regular mail," he said, sitting down in a chair at Cletus' bedside. "Evidently your good physician didn't see any urgency in your asking for me."

  "No," said Cletus, "it's outside his area of knowledge."

  "I think he assumed I'd have to tell you that I—or we Exotics, that is—couldn't help you either," said Mondar, slowly. "I'm afraid he may have been right. I called the hospital after I got your message and talked to someone I know on the staff here. I was told you've got a problem of almost certain psychological rejection of any organ graft"

  "That's right," said Cletus.

  "He said you thought that perhaps I—or perhaps some other Exotic, working with you, could succeed in overcoming such a psychological reaction long enough for a healthy leg to be grafted on you."

  "It's not possible?" Cletus watched the Exotic closely as he spoke.

  Mondar looked down and smoothed the blue robe covering his crossed knees. Then he looked back up at Cletus.

  "It's not impossible," he said. "It'd be possible in the case, say, of someone like myself, who's trained in the areas of mental and physical self-control since he was a boy. I can ignore pain, or even consciously will my heart to stop beating, if I wish. I could also, if necessary, suppress my immune reactions—even if they included the kind of psychological rejection that afflicts you … Cletus, you've got a tremendous amount of native talent, but you haven't had my years of training. Even with my assistance you wouldn't be able to control the rejection mechanism in your body."

  "You're not the only one who can ignore pain," said Cletus. "I can do that too, you know."

  "Can you?" Mondar looked interested. "Of course, come to think of it. Both after your first time up at fitter's Pass, and this last time at Two Rivers when you damaged the knee again, you did a good deal of moving around on it when ordinarily such movement should have been unendurable."

  His eyes narrowed a little, thoughtfully. "Tell me—do you deny the pain—I mean do you refuse to admit the pain is there? Or do you ignore it—that is you remain conscious that the sensation is there but you don't allow the sensation to affect you?"

  "I ignore it," answered Cletus. "I start out by relaxing to the point where I feel a little bit as though I'm floating. Just that much relaxation takes a lot of the sting out of the pain. Then I move in on what's left and more or less take the color out of it. What I'm left with is a little like a feeling of pressure. I can tell if it increases or decreases, or if it goes away entirely, but I'm not bothered by it in any way."

  Mondar nodded slowly. "Very good. In fact, unusually good for self-trained," he said. "Tell me, can you control your dreams?"

  "To a certain extent," said Cletus. "I can set up a mental problem before falling asleep, and work it out while I'm asleep—sometimes in the shape of a dream. I can also work out problems the same way while I'm awake by throwing a certain section of my mind out of gear, so to speak, and letting the rest of my body and mind run on automatic pilot."

  Mondar gazed at him. Then he shook his head. But it was an admiring shake.

  "You amaze me, Cletus," the Exotic said. "Would you try something for me? Look at that wall just to your left there, and tell me what you see."

  Cletus turned his head away from Mondar and gazed at the flat, vertical expanse of white-painted wall. There was a small prickling sensation at the side of his neck just behind and below his right ear—followed by a sudden explosion of pain from the site of the prick, like the pain from the venom of a bee sting following the initial puncture. Cletus breathed out calmly; as the breath left his lungs, a crimson violence of the pain was washed clean and unimportant. He turned back to Mondar.

  "I didn't see anything," he said, "of course."

  "Of course. It was only a trick to get you to turn your head away," said Mondar, putting what looked like a miniature mechanical pencil back in his robes. "The amazing thing is, I wasn't able to measure any skin flinch, and that's a physiological reaction. Clearly your body hasn't much doubt about your ability to handle pain quickly."

  He hesitated. "All right, Cletus," he said. "I'll work with you. But it's only fair to warn you that I still don't see any real chance of success. How soon do you want the transplant done?"

  "I don't want it done," said Cletus. "I think you're probably quite right about the impossibility of suppressing my rejection mechanism. So we'll do something else. As long as it's a long shot anyway, let's try for a miracle cure."

  "Miracle … " Mondar echoed the word slowly.

  "Why not?" said Cletus cheerfully. "Miracle cures have been reported down through the ages. Suppose I undergo a purely symbolic operation. There's both flesh and bone missing from my left knee where the prosthetic unit was surgically implanted after I was first wounded years ago. I want that surgical implant taken out and some small, purely token portions of the flesh and bone from equivalent areas of my right knee transplanted into the area where the original flesh and bone is missing in the left. Then we cover both knees up with a cast"—his eyes met Mondar's—"and you and I concentrate hard while healing takes place."

  Mondar sat for a second. Then he stood up.

  "Anything is eventually possible," he murmured. "I've already said I'd help you. But this is something that's going to require some thought, and some consultation with my fellow Exotics. I'll come back to see you in a day or two."

  The next morning Cletus had a visit from both Eachan Khan and Melissa. Eachan came in first, alone. He sat stiffly in the chair beside Cletus' bed. Cletus, propped up in a sitting position gazed at the older man keenly.

  "Understand they're going to try to do something to fix that knee of yours," Eachan said.

  "I twisted some arms," answered Cletus, smiling.

  "Yes. Well, good luck." Eachan looked away, out the window of the room for a moment, and then back at Cletus. "Thought I'd bring you the good wishes of our men and officers," he said. "You promised them a victory almost without a casualty—and then you delivered it."

  "I promised a battle," Cletus corrected, gently. "And I was hoping we wouldn't have much in the way of casualties. Besides, they deserve a good deal of credit themselves for the way they executed their battle orders."

  "Nonsense!" said Eachan brusquely. He cleared his throat. "They all know you're emigrating to the Dorsai. All very happy about it. Incidentally, seems you started a small rash of emigrations. That young lieutenant of yours is coming over as soon as his shoulder heals up."

  "You accepted him, didn't you?" Cletus asked.

  "Oh, of course," Eachan said. "The Dorsai'll accept any military man with a good record. He'll have to pass through our officers school, of course, if he wants to keep his commission with us, though. Marc Dodds told him there was no guarantee he'd make it."

  "He will," said Cletus. "Incidentally, I'd like your opinion on something—now that I'm a Dorsai myself. If I supply the funds for subsistence, training facilities and equipment, do you suppose you could get together a regiment-sized body of officers and men who would be willing to invest six months in a complete retraining program—if I could guarantee them that at the end of that time they'd be able to find employment at half again their present pay?"

  Eachan stared. "Six months is a long time for a professional soldier to live on subsistence," he said, after a moment. "But after Two R
ivers, I think it just might be done. It's not just the hope of better pay, much as that means to a lot of these people who've got families back on the Dorsai. It's the better chance of staying alive to get back to the families that you might be able to give them. Want me to see about it?"

  "I'd appreciate it," said Cletus. "All right," said Eachan. "But where's the money to come from for all this?"

  Cletus smiled. "I've got some people in mind," he said. "I'll let you know about that later. You can tell the officers and the men you contact that it's all conditional on my having the funds, of course."

  "Of course." Eachan fingered his mustache. "Melly's outside."

  "Is she?" asked Cletus.

  "Yes. I asked her to wait while I had a word with you on some private matters first, before she came in … " Eachan hesitated. Cletus waited.

  Eachan's back was as stiffly upright as a surveyor's rod. His jaw was clamped and the akin of his face was like stamped metal.

  "Why don't you marry her?" he said, gruffly.

  "Eachan … " Cletus checked himself and paused. "What makes you think Melissa would want to marry me, anyway?"

  "She likes you," said Eachan. "You like her. You'd make a good team. She's mostly heart and you're nearly all head. I know you both better than you know each other."

  Cletus shook his head slowly, for once finding no words ready to his tongue.

  "Oh, I know she acts as if she knows all the answers when she doesn't, and acts like she wants to run my life, and yours, and everybody else's for them," went on Eachan. "But she can't help it. She does feel for people, you know—I mean, feel for what they're actually like, at core. Like her mother in that. And she's young. She feels something's so about someone and can't see why they don't do exactly what she thinks they ought to do, being who they really are. But she'll learn."

  Cletus shook his head again. "And me?" he said. "What makes you think I'd learn?"

  "Try it. Find out," retorted Eachan.